


Nail Polish

by missalline



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-14
Updated: 2013-07-07
Packaged: 2017-11-16 07:05:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/536802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missalline/pseuds/missalline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her favorite color was 'Morning Rose".</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Color

Amy normally paints her nails in her room. She has since the day she started traveling with the Doctor. She paints them all kinds of colors: reds and blues, greens and oranges, the color blarg from Belforem Six (which is somehow blue and yellow at the same time). Sometimes she’ll use her polish in other rooms, but only when the Doctor and Rory are there and she moves her production to spend time with her boys.   
Amy is very careful about her nail polish. If the bottle tips over or a drop falls from the brush she immediately cleans it up. She keeps track of every bottle so that she doesn’t end up losing her favorite shade on some alien planet.   
Amy likes her nails to be perfect. She refuses to touch anything while they’re drying, and she makes the Doctor or Rory do anything that can’t be put off. She never paints her nails in the control room; it’s always shaking somewhat and the movement make it difficult to avoid painting her cuticles.  
So, Rory reasons, there shouldn’t be smudges of pink on the captain’s seat. And there shouldn’t be a half-used bottle of ‘Morning Rose’ color jammed in a small crevice in the bottom floor of the control room. So Rory fishes the bottle out and sticks it in his pocket to give to the very busy Doctor later. He thinks that the Doctor may want to put the bottle of nail polish in his “room of old companions’ things”, if such a room exists.

*****************************************************************

Rory doesn’t remember the polish until he’s headed off to bed. “Doctor,” he says, turning around, “I found this earlier.” Rory pulls the small bottle out of his pocket and offers it to the Doctor. “I’s not Amy’s. Thought you might want to put it somewhere.”   
The Doctor takes the bottle slowly, a look of sorrow coming over his features. “But she was never in this room,” he whispers, “The desktop changed after I regenerated.”  
“There’re also smudges of it on the seat,” Rory says even though he’s pretty sure the Doctor’s not hearing him, “I could clean it off…”  
“No!” The Doctor’s head snaps toward Rory, fierce passion in his eyes. “Just, just leave it.”   
Rory senses that he shouldn’t say anything else, so he just turns and leaves. He’s barely out of the room when he thinks he hears the TARDIS hum sadly. He looks back to see the Doctor slowly stroking part of her controls. “I know, old girl,” the Doctor whispers, “I miss her, too.” Rory makes himself walk the rest of the way to his and Amy’s room before he allows himself to wonder about the identity of ‘her’.

******************************************************************

Rose Tyler was never careful with her nail polish.


	2. Thoughts

She’s been with him for seven hundred years. She has seen all of his faces. She has seen companions come and go. She knows this man better than anyone else. She knows his hopes and dreams, his fears and insecurities. She knows what was in his room.   
There have been some who have though that she is just an extension of him, part of his mind tucked away in a wonderful machine. These people are wrong. She is her own being with her own personality. She is, however, connected to her Doctor by a special telepathic link. She wanted to see the universe, so she stole a Time Lord; he wanted to see the universe, so he stole a TARDIS. She loves her Doctor.  
She does not however, always love his companions. In fact she rarely does. She likes to play tricks on the ones she dislikes. Nothing big or life threatening, just something that helps her cope with them. Her favorite is to move their rooms about. She was mean to Martha, whose room was always in a different spot and whose personal belongings were constantly rearranged. It took the TARDIS longer than it should to figure out why she disliked Martha so much.  
She is helpful to other companions. Donna never once got lost; everything was always in its place. Rory and Amy’s room doesn’t allow sound out. Jack’s Wi-Fi would look-up anything, no matter how many times the Doctor tried to add ‘parental blockers’ (If it didn’t he was much more flirty, which had a tendency to cause problems among the TARDIS’s other occupants). When River is aboard she is provided with a hidden lock box that the Doctor can’t find (They both worry about his self-control when it comes to River’s diary).  
More general things happen, too. When she likes the Doctor’s companion(s) she is much more likely to take them where requested. When she doesn’t like them she is much more likely to act up. When she likes them she cooks and self-cleans and lets the Doctor know when their favorite foods are running low.   
Yes, the TARDIS has her own mind. But there was one she loved as dearly as the Doctor did; one pink and yellow human who captured both of his hearts and hers as well.   
The TARDIS felt it when the Doctor took her hand; she felt his surprise at the electric shock that rocketed through his body. The TARDIS recognized her love for Rose Tyler long before the Doctor recognized his. Rose helped the Doctor heal and the TARDIS would always love her for that. That’s why Rose was able to hijack the screens when she was trying to get back, even if only for seconds at a time. The TARDIS has a weakness for Rose, a weakness that allowed Rose to break through the top of the line security the TARDIS had in place.  
Rose’s room remains untouched and locked to all but the Doctor. The door is right next to the Doctor’s, where it has been since the first time the TARDIS needed Rose to save the Doctor from a nightmare. Rose’s possessions are always held in place no matter how much the TARDIS rocks and shakes. The TARDIS could not bear to part with any more of Rose Tyler than she already has and will not allow a single thing to break.

*********************

It was a rare occurrence that the Doctor would be asleep when Rose was awake, but every once in a while it would happen. When it did Rose would grab her favorite color of nail polish and sit in the control room, painting her nails while talking to the TARDIS. And the TARDIS, brilliant mind that she was, developed a way to talk back. She would use different hums and colors & intensities of light to talk to Rose. And Rose, brilliant mind that she was, understood. After a while Rose would start to shoo the Doctor out so that she and the TARDIS could have ‘girl talk’. He would smile that special smile in amusement, and make some playful comment about how wonderful it was that his girls were getting along, or that he was worried about them plotting behind his back, or how he was fascinated by the concept of ‘girl talk’ and would love to be allowed to observe. Rose would laugh while she pushed the jokingly protesting Doctor out the door, and the TARDIS would activate her laughter-hum.  
But then Rose was lost, and the TARDIS couldn’t help her Doctor because she was nearly just as sad as he was. The TARDIS loved Rose Tyler, and was lucky enough to have told her so days before Rose was lost. That was why the TARDIS was slightly less depressed than her Doctor: she had gotten to say it.   
So when the Doctor regenerated and the TARDIS crashed and had to rebuild herself, she used power she shouldn’t have to save the only physical evidence of Rose that now belonged to her. She kept the smudges of ‘Morning Rose’ on the captain’s seat. She grabbed and held on to the bottle the color came from, wedging it in a crevice that really should have changed with the rest of the room. The TARDIS refused to let go of her small reminders of Rose, which is why what should have been a five minute jump from the perspective of Amelia Pond turned into twelve years.  
So, years later, when Rory pulled the bottle of color out of the crack in her floor, the TARDIS asked the Doctor to put it back. He did, because he understood. And when he took the Ponds to Resinneen, the planet of scented resin that came in all different colors, he obtained a clear resin that gave off the faint smell of roses (because Rose had actually smelled like that naturally. It was one of the things they loved about her.) and filled in the crack so that the bottle of color could never be removed (Rose had had multiple bottles, and the Doctor kept one in his room, too).   
The TARDIS missed Rose dearly, more than she had missed anyone before. Rose had been her best friend.


	3. Hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Long time no see! Sorry 'bout that. I started uni and haven't had much time for, well, anything really.
> 
> This chapter is set during series three. Also, I would like to say that I actually like Martha, but I'm pretty sure that TARDIS didn't. This is in no way intended as Martha-bashing.

When she was in pre-med, Martha's favorite teachers had talked about the importance of a doctor's hands.

"Your hands," they would say, "are your link to a patient. When you meet them, you shake their hand. A firm hand shake instills confidence. When you talk to them, illustrate what you are saying with your hands. When you hand them something to take with them you are handing them a part of who you are as a professional. Your hands are important. I have had patients and colleagues who have judged me on my hands. If you want to be professional you have to look professional, and, as a doctor, your hands have to look professional, too."

So Martha was careful with her hands. She tried to avoid situations where her hands could get hurt. She kept her skins as soft and smooth as she could. Her nails were always short and clean. If Martha painted her nails, which she rarely did, she used unobtrusive colors.

Things changed when she started travelling with the Doctor. She hurt her hands on a constant basis. Her skin would crack. And, one day, she decided she wanted to paint her nails a bright obnoxious pink. The problem with this decision was that she didn't have any pink nail polish. So a couple of days after Martha made this decision she went to talk to the Doctor.

*****************************

"Doctor, I was wondering if you might have any nail polish."

"Now, Martha," he spun to face her "do I look like a man who paints his finger nails?" he said, wiggling said fingers in the air in front of his face.

Martha laughed at him. "I didn't mean if you had any. I meant if there was any that someone else might have left. I was hoping for something in a pink. Specifically a bright pink that only hyperactive six year-olds are supposed to like." Martha had been looking at her nails, and as she finished speaking she looked back up at the Doctor. The look on his face was one Martha hated seeing: the look of deep-seated emotional pain.

"No," he said softly, "there's nothing like that. There's only one color of pink, and-," he stopped abruptly and took a deep breath, and then another one. When he spoke again his voice was firm. "I'm sorry Martha but you can't use it." And then he left. He said nothing else, just turned and walked deeper into the TARDIS.

*****************************

"It's about her isn't it? The girl? The friend he lost?" Martha had just closed her door after finally finding her room, which never took less than half an hour. "Rose? She painted her nails a lot?" Martha jumped, shocked, when she felt the smallest buzz through the door handle. The TARDIS never responded to her, and now she had. "Oh…" Martha breathed, "You miss her, too." The handle buzzed again, and the lights shifted just the tiniest bit. "I'm sorry," Martha moved placing her hand on the doorframe of her bathroom, "I hadn't realized you'd lost her, too."

******************************

The TARDIS was nicer to Martha for the next week. Right up until Martha tried once again to make the Doctor feel something he didn't, and then everything went back to the way it was before. Well, almost everything, because maybe, just maybe, every once in a while, it took Martha less time to find her room.


End file.
